1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to managing business critical data in a computer, and in particular, to importing a data model from any source and expressing the data model in a standard format.
2. Description of Related Art
Master Data Management™, available from the assignee of the present invention, is an application that allows users to manage their business critical data. This critical data can originate from a myriad of sources and external feeds, but ultimately, the goal is that all of this data be consolidated into a central business data warehouse. Master Data Management™ is the process and framework for maintaining a series of business rules and process workflows that will manage this data as it feeds in from multiple sources. Master Data Management™ then applies these business rules and process workflows to produce “master” data, which is then fed to all consuming business processes.
Core to the management of master data is the definition of a data model. The data model serves as the foundation for all business rules and workflow processes within the Master Data Management™ framework. The data model represents the form the master data must ultimately take in the customer's data warehouse to be used by the consuming business applications.
Today, many customers have existing data models. These may be represented/created through a data modeling tool, such as ERWIN™ or EMBARCADERO™. These models may exist as a physical database on a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). Or, these models may exist in some other, undetermined format. Further, such a model may represent significant investment on the part of the customer, and the model needs to be recreated within the Master Data Management™ framework. Often times, these data models contain several hundred tables, thousands of attributes or columns, and a large number of primary key, foreign key, index, constraint, and other table linkage information.
Prior to this invention, users would have to manually recreate their data model in the Master Data Management™ framework—this is necessary so that business rules and workflow processes will understand the data. This process can take several weeks or months to define manually.
Accordingly, what is needed is a method, apparatus, and article of manufacture that allows a user to easily and efficiently import data from a variety of data models into a standard format.